Tag Archives: happiness project

I’m on day three of exercise “fun,” and, indeed, it still blows. I’m wondering if there’s a study somewhere that has examined the frontal lobe of those people who are exhilarated while exercising. I bet those people are better than I am at sports. Well, that’s not hard to do anyway.

I was forced to do 15 minutes on the elliptical machine today because about five minutes into my elliptical time some dude got on my treadmill. Okay, so it’s not my treadmill, but whatever. And he stretched first which is smart, and I should probably start doing. My friend Amanda once told me you lose some ridiculous percentage, like 40%, of the effectiveness of your workout if you don’t stretch before and after. I remembered that about 25 minutes into my 30 minutes today. I decided I’ll try that tomorrow.

As previously reported, I’ve been listening to a book on tape (er… on iPhone) while exercising. I decided to start with a non-fiction text that I felt would inspire my changes: The Happiness Project.

The Happiness Project

While taking a group of students on a trip to a thankfully cool northern Minnesota earlier this month, I came across this book and it inspired a lot of what this blog is simply in its concept. I’ve listened to the beginning portion of it and really enjoy it. She has done research about what happiness is, and I appreciate her viewpoint on how approaching a happiness project is not something that solves sadness or depression. Her desire isn’t to be gleeful all the time, but rather to be less short with her loved ones, enjoy life more, and live a richer experience. I’m down with that.

So far, she has specifically addressed exercise, de-cluttering, and love. The exercise bit was helpful while actually exercising! Shocking! I especially was connected to her bit about de-cluttering. I have a file cabinet, but it was simply full of crap. I also have two boxes in my closet brimming with papers- one says “shred” and the other says “file.” As it turns out, they were both full of a lot of nothing. Credit cards I lost in the bankruptcy and documents about them, student loans I consolidated earlier this year, all kinds of random things with my personal information on them. After cleaning them all out, I took two trash bags full of documents to our local recycling center where they were shredded before my eyes. Aside from feeling accomplished and happy, I had a cathartic release. Those documents represented a lot of bad decisions in my past- financially mostly- and now they’re released into the wild of recycled goodness. Yeah, that’s good.

I end today with two random thoughts:

1. Okay, has anyone else seen this TRANSVAGINAL MESH commercial?! It’s on all the time and I know I shouldn’t giggle at it because it’s very serious, but… come on. Transvaginal Mesh sounds like the name of a metal band. I digress.

2. I pay $600 for a studio apartment. I don’t pay any utilities (awesome). But the phone service that was free when I moved in is gone, the convenience store in the building doesn’t accept debit cards (the opposite of convenience), the internet hasn’t worked in nearly a month (I’ve been spending ridiculous amounts of time at my parents’ house to make these posts), and, oh yeah, a giant cabinet nearly fell on me last week. I’m going to move in two months when my lease ends.